Nearly every entrepreneur has heard the refrain, "Get back to me when you have some traction,” while seeking funding. From an unsophisticated investor, this response might be a non-confrontational way of saying "No." However, when uttered by most Venture Capitalists (VCs) it conveys a desire to obtain validation of your venture's value proposition from dispassionate, objective third parties. In this context, your "value proposition" is defined as the utility you claim users will derive from your solution.

At Greylock, my partners and I are driven by one guiding mission: always help entrepreneurs. It doesn’t matter whether an entrepreneur is in our portfolio, whether we’re considering an investment, or whether we’re casually meeting for the first time.

Back in July, we made an attempt at listing the best annual tech startup events in Europe, with some included from the Middle East and Africa. It was a 'first attempt' and as you can see, it's a complex patchwork of events.

Cédric Giorgi's insight:

Who else than Mike Butcher from Techcrunch to curate such a nice list!

As a co-founder of RockThePost, the leading crowdfunding platform for entrepreneurs, I naturally advocate for startups to get funding via crowdfunding, as it provides several additional benefits that can prove very useful early on.

Recently 37signals published an article titled Some advice from Jeff Bezos. This wasn’t your usual advice, and I found it interesting to read and how familiar it felt as I read each next line. The post was all about “changing your mind”. The way I would describe the overall theme, is “inconsistency”. Here’s the key part of the post, paraphrased :

"People who are right a lot of the time, are people who often change their mind. Consistency of thought is not a particularly positive trait."

I find this fascinating, because one of the biggest challenges I’ve found as a founder for the last few years is the times when I change my mind, when have a realisation and I become inconsistent on a thought I previously had. This is amplified as your startup grows, because you have users, co-workers and stakeholders who you are in touch with who are there to witness and be affected by your inconsistency.

The Founder Institute has developed a solution to this long-standing pain in the ass that all startups experience. After speaking with dozens of founders, mentors, advisors, and startup teams, the startup accelerator and network is publicly releasing what it calls the “Founder Advisor Standard Template” (FAST), a free document designed to provide founders and advisors with a simple legal framework to formalize their relationship without all the legal chaos.

Here are some thoughts on how to choose an idea for your startup for those who can’t make it.

Investors always tell you to pursue big ideas, find your passion and iterate rapidly.That’s valuable advice, but there are some other important considerations that you don’t hear very often: tackle a small market, look for bizarre behavior, don’t make waves, and be unwilling to do anything else.

"A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology, or take venture funding, or have some sort of "exit." The only essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth."

“Imagine you’re sitting across from a reporter at lunch. You’re telling them what you do, your story, why they should care about your product. You have to convince this reporter to not only write about you, but that what you’re doing matters. That you’re going to be successful.” This is Caryn Marooney, Head of Technology Communications for Facebook. But before that, she co-founded OutCast, the elite PR agency that worked with one-time startups Amazon, Salesforce.com, Netflix and VMware. She’s seen firsthand how hard it is for young companies to capture press attention when they have zero brand recognition and limited resources. Most founders set out to create something iconic but don’t know where to start. At First Round’s recent CEO Summit, Marooney boiled down this massive challenge into an execution plan and guidelines for startups to craft an image that will resonate with the public and the press, launch on a strong note, and build momentum as they grow — regardless of size and resources.

Cédric Giorgi's insight:

This is clearly a very good article on how to manage PR for your startup.

Nearly every entrepreneur has heard the refrain, "Get back to me when you have some traction,” while seeking funding. From an unsophisticated investor, this response might be a non-confrontational way of saying "No." However, when uttered by most Venture Capitalists (VCs) it conveys a desire to obtain validation of your venture's value proposition from dispassionate, objective third parties. In this context, your "value proposition" is defined as the utility you claim users will derive from your solution.

In two prior blog posts, A SuperAngel’s Investment Guide and Angel Investing Secrets, I presented our investment philosophy and many of our lessons learned. However, crossing this milestone is a great time to take stock on how things have played out and describe the adjustments we made in the past 18 months.

We all know that a lot of smart and talented people start startups. You see huge numbers of startups getting started, and yet there are actually only a handful of startups that are big successes. What happens along the way that causes such failure?

It's like there's a tunnel full of monsters that kill them along the way. I'm going to tell you what these monsters are so you know to avoid them.

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.